


In A Dangerous Time

by Rubynye



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Major Character Injury, Scars, Sneaking Around
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-20
Updated: 2015-02-20
Packaged: 2018-03-13 23:09:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3399704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubynye/pseuds/Rubynye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Peggy was shot and what happened after.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In A Dangerous Time

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to Pot of Soup for an excellent beta, and inspired by those lovely little bullet scars they gave Peggy in _Agent Carter_.

Peggy's mistake was in walking past Steve. She might have made it to the jeep under her own steam if he hadn't seen her shoulder from behind, or more precisely, the blood leaking through her jacket and drizzling down her back. "Agent Carter!" Steve _bellowed_ , all ludicrous melodrama, and she turned to find herself nose-to-star with his broad spangled chest just as he hooked an arm beneath her knees and tipped her into his grasp. He'd come at her from her good side so she drove a satisfying elbow into his midsection, but he didn't even grace her with a wince, just lifted her like a bride, which she did _not_ let herself think.

On the other hand, that was when, with a whistling in the air, the jeep took a direct hit to the petrol tank and exploded, knocking Falsworth's red beret into the sky as he tumbled back heels over head. If she'd made it there Peggy likely would have been climbing in at just that moment instead of gasping into Steve's bosom within the curled shelter of his body around her. "Shit!" she heard Dugan's muffled shout to Steve's left, echoed by Dernier's more distant "Sacre merde!" It would be entertaining, she thought, if her shoulder weren't burning from the inside and Steve weren't compressing the air out of her, to say nothing of the general mortal danger.

Rifle shots, two, three, a distant cry, and Barnes coolly announced, "Got 'im," overlapping with Morita's call, "He's alive." Steve unfolded from around Peggy enough for her to see Morita kneeling by the smoldering ruins, one hand on Falsworth's chest and one in his medkit, before Steve billowed with a gusty sigh of relief that shifted her like an ocean wave. "Dugan?" Morita added, beckoning. "Come carry him?"

"Take this, support his head." Steve draped Peggy's legs over his knee to reach for his shield and pass it to Dugan, and she took the opportunity to plant a foot on the ground, ignoring the pulse of pain down her back and arm.

"Put me down and go -- CAPTAIN!" Ignoring her protest, Steve scooped her right back up and set off for the trees at a loping jog. "I can walk!"

"Like Hell you can," Steve retorted, and despite her annoyance Peggy couldn't help a little flutter of fondness at his refusal to mince words in false chivalry. "You're hurt, let me help you. Besides, we need to run."

"Hypocrite," came in a puff from Steve's right just before Barnes hove into view.

"Shut it." Steve lifted his chin, tucked Peggy more firmly against his heart, and sped up a tick, leaving Barnes behind. Peggy glanced over his shoulder; keeping steady pace behind Steve, Barnes gave her a grin and a conspiratorial wink, and she grinned back until her head began to spin as the forest closed in around them. If only to herself, Peggy admitted Steve's ridiculous determination to carry her made tactical sense; shutting her eyes against the vertigo, she pressed her cheek to Steve's leather-clad chest, grounding herself on his solidity, and privately let herself enjoy it.

***** 

Peggy's mistake was in not suborning Steve. If she'd appealed to his sense of adventure and won his assistance, her original plan surely would have succeeded. Instead, it was he who caught her in the bowels of the administrative building, an electric torch clenched in her teeth as she attempted to jimmy the records room door open one-handed, the other tucked inside her overlarge sling. "Agent Carter," Steve said crisply, appearing from the darkness like a star from a cloud, and Peggy had to bite down hard on the torch to keep hold of it, her teeth squeaking across the Bakelite. "You're out of bed."

Peggy snatched the torch from her mouth as she straightened up, doing her best not to notice Steve's handsomeness in plain uniform slacks and a white shirt open at his finely formed throat. "And you're out of barracks, Captain Rogers," she answered pertly as she could for being caught so flat-footed. "Though to your credit I didn't hear you coming." She shoved the torch into her robe's pocket along with the hairpin-turned-lockpick, plunging them both into near-darkness, but even so Steve's eyes gleamed. "How's Falsworth?"

"Woke up half an hour ago, knew who and when and what. Doc MacAllister says he'll be fine." Steve's shine spread to his smile as he grinned at her, artless as a boy.

"Excellent news," Peggy agreed, "We should requisition a new beret for him," she added inanely, gathering her hospital gown around her as if it held her dignity in its weave. "If you'll excuse me--!"

"Peggy." With the lightest touch to her elbow, Steve offered his hand; Peggy blinked at him, exasperated with herself for how he seemed to glow in her sight, took a long easing breath and laid her hand in his. "C'mon." One word, soft in his deep warm voice, and everything in her wanted to slump and melt towards him, wax before flame.

It took all her strength, as Steve's fingers slipped between hers and their palms brushed and pressed, to remind herself that she'd withstood gunfire and Colonel Phillips, she would not surrender to Steve's kindness and her own racing blood. "I brought those documents back myself," she insisted, reaching for firm, landing perhaps on peevish. "I want a look at them."

Steve nodded, his hand interlaced warmly with hers, but said, "You won't heal up if you don't stay in bed."

Peggy's palm flat against his held more truth than her words. "As I understand, from you that's rank hypocrisy."

Steve grinned wider, dropping his gaze to the floor between them, and Peggy felt a giggle bubble in her throat and ruthlessly swallowed it. "Yeah, it is," he admitted, hair trembling with his nod, "but that's why I get it. I really do." He laid his other hand on hers, cradling it as he lifted his earnest eyes to hers again. "I know it feels like lying around doing nothing, but it's not at all. We need every soldier at his, or her, strongest." He sounded like a film, and Peggy could have rolled her eyes, but his earnestness warmly enfolded her, his shining eyes held her fast. "I need you at your strongest, Agent Carter," he told her, and it was unbelievable how fully she believed him. "I still haven't gotten the hang of those one-armed pushups," he added, to make her smile, and smile she did.

Then she blew out a breath and dropped her head, stepping forward to rest her brow on Steve's shoulder. "All right, Captain Rogers," she acquiesced, "All right."

"Then let's get you back to base hospital." Steve dropped a hand to his pocket. "After a look at those documents." He pulled out a key, and his grin tipped cheekily sideways.

"Crikey o"Riley," Peggy breathed in delighted, exasperated shock. "Where'd you get that?"

"Like you said, I'm a captain." He smirked, but when Peggy bared her teeth at him his eyes went wide; she buried her face in his shoulder a bare moment before her laughter bubbled over, and he breathed a wordless happy sigh into her hair.

Then she pulled back and pulled out her torch, and his key flashed in its light.

***** 

Peggy made no mistakes with Steve by her side. Trotting tiptoe through the shadows, they paused in the lee of the mess hall to glance over their objective across the way, the window to her ward, glinting in the side of the hospital building. Hand in firm hand, Peggy glanced up at Steve's profile, his noble lines offset by his cheeky smile, and her heart fluttered youthfully inside her. It was almost indecently fun sneaking around the base with him, evading the sentries and creeping together through the night. He glanced at her, smooth cheek creasing with his grin, and she couldn't help flashing her own in return.

Together they darted to the window, and Steve reached up to push it open, then took Peggy's waist in the most respectful grasp possible and boosted her up. It was much easier climbing back inside with his help, she thought as she pulled herself in with one arm, twisting to avoid jostling her wounded shoulder and hiking a knee up on the sill, trying not to feel his handprints lingering warm on her hips or to think of the view he'd be getting as she clambered inside.

As soon as she'd swung her legs in and set both feet firmly on the bench below, she turned and stuck head and shoulders back out the window, glanced across the empty pathways, and softly called, "Steve!" He popped right back around the corner, and she felt her smile spread as her heart rose. "Thank you!"

"Of course!" He stepped towards her, tilting his face up, and she leaned back just enough to encourage him closer. "Thank _you_ for that observation about the armories, I'll telegram Stark--"

Close enough. Peggy grabbed Steve's collar and hauled him in the last step, watching his eyes widen to roundness as she dropped hers shut, and kissed him. Steve quivered under her mouth for a heartbeat, for two, and then his hand slid broad and warm up her cheek as he tilted his head into it and kissed her back fervently, opening to her sweetly as a rosebud. They plunged into the kiss, into each other's heat, for as long as they dared until a rustle of wind made them jump in unison and shudder apart.

Steve looked dazed, his wet lips gleaming, and Peggy wanted, oh, so very much, desire quivering down her thighs. But she made herself uncurl her fingers from Steve's collar, made herself whisper a final, "Thank you."

"You're welcome," Steve whispered in return, and she could feel the banked strength in his hand pressing to her cheek for a moment, before he pulled away and stepped back. "Goodnight, Peggy."

"Goodnight, Steve," she murmured; he turned with one last glance at her, and she watched him out of sight. Then she pulled herself inside and shut the window, stepped down from the bench, and hugged herself one-armed for the sheer rush of delight, before she turned down the corridor to put herself back to bed, as her Captain had ordered.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [In a Dangerous Time [Podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4320591) by [blackglass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackglass/pseuds/blackglass)




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